Beginning Friday night, Philly trolley passengers will face detours and longer trips for two weeks while SEPTA shuts down the West Philly trolley tunnel to perform maintenance and construction.

SEPTA announced its 2015 Trolley Tunnel Blitz as part of its “Rebuilding for the Future” infrastructure improvement campaign. The trolley tunnel will be out of service from 10 p.m. Friday until Sunday, August 16th.

Trolley Routes 11, 13, 34 and 36 will divert during the construction period to 40th and Market, and route R0 will reroute to 40th and Filbert. Trolley users can transfer at 40th and Market to the Market-Frankford Line, which SEPTA says will provide service throughout Center City for the two-week period.

SEPTA this year has taken the express train to record Regional Rail ridership.

In the recently ended July 2014-June 2015 fiscal year, SEPTA regional trains saw 37.4 million annual trips, a more than two percent increase over 2014’s data, SEPTA said in a press release today. In the 2014 fiscal year, 36.7 million annual trips were recorded on Regional Rail, per a SEPTA Ridership and Revenue report.

With record Regional Rail ridership also reported in 2013, SEPTA has seen that division grow steadily over the past several years. Today’s report mentioned that for the 16th consecutive year, SEPTA has also operated with a balanced budget. Read more »

SEPTA is still having issues with their transportation plan for Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia in September.

Yesterday morning, shortly after sales opened for the limited “Pope Pass,” the special website set up specifically for those passes experienced technical difficulties, prompting SEPTA to suspend sales of the pass and issue tweets promising to advise potential customers when sales would resume.

No new announcements yet, but #SEPTA commits to providing 24-hours of notice to all before Pope Pass Website E-commerce Sales Resume.

This isn’t the only time SEPTA’s had some trouble rolling out a transit plan for what is expected to be a massive event.

Transportation issues abounded in 2008, after the Phillies won their first World Series since 1980. Now, transit officials say, they are applying some of the lessons they learned from those issues in their preparation for a likely much bigger event, Pope Francis‘ visit to Philadelphia on September 26th-27th. Read more »

Special SEPTA passes for Pope Francis’ visit in September were set to go on sale this morning, and the site went live at 9 a.m. as promised. But then things started going haywire, with users reporting technical difficulties purchasing passes. Read more »

ORIGINAL: SEPTA may have pushed the Secret Service to be less secretive about how people will get into and out of town for Pope Francis’ visit on Sept. 26th and 27th, but it’s kept the workings of the website for ordering the special one-day Regional Rail passes, www.septa.org/papalvisitphilly, under tight wraps.

Until this morning, when the site went live at 9 a.m. So, like all of you, we just got a chance to take it for a test run.

“Come on,” I yelled to my oblivious companion. “I don’t want to miss the train.” By the time she caught up at the top of the stairs, I was fishing around for bills in my pocket. We didn’t have tokens. They don’t sell them at that El stop. I slid a $5 bill through the cage and my friend and I went through. I overpaid by either $1.20 (using the cost of two tokens) or 50 cents (using the cost of two fares).

Nothing I should complain about. But this happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. Many SEPTA stations don’t have token machines or booths. And ever since subway fares rose to $2.25 just over two years ago, I’m constantly shelling out $3 for late-night rides on the Market-Frankford El or the Broad Street Subway. Read more »